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Our Story

Hello fellow yogis,

My name is Jeannie Page and I am the founder of The Yoga Diaries™. It was after a divine stroke of inspiration that I felt compelled to begin this site. Having myself lived through a profound transformation through yoga, as I walked further down the yogic path, I was awed by the number of people I met who had also experienced incredible healing and powerful evolutions in their lives: All because of yoga. I knew I needed to share their stories. I knew I needed to spread the word about the healing power of yoga. And so The Yoga Diaries™ was born.

Here is my story….

Out of the Darkness and Into the Light

It was with every ounce of energy that I could muster from the deep recesses of my soul, that I dragged myself into my neighborhood yoga studio. I hadn’t set foot on a yoga mat in years, and as I was still relatively new to Los Angeles, I didn’t know a soul at this yoga studio. But despite that, something compelled me to enter the studio that day. That day was the first day of the rest of my life…

It was February of 2008 and I was living through the deepest, most paralyzing depression of my life. It was not by any accident that I had found myself suddenly living in Los Angeles, after having spent my entire life living on the East Coast. All of my life I had dreamed of moving to the West Coast, but at this particular time in my life, there was a love in Los Angeles…a love for which I needed to fight…and fight I did, with every breath in my body.

Despite my passion and my intense soul-connected, light-infused love for this man, my intention to fight for him was not well-received. Instead of running into my arms, he chose “the other woman.” He outright rejected me, callously cut me out of his life, and tossed me to the curb like a piece of garbage. In doing so, the best friend I’d ever known walked right out of my life and left a gaping hole in my heart, rendering my soul completely shattered and broken. To add insult to injury, I was jobless, largely friendless and virtually alone in the vast, lonely sea that is Los Angeles. This was my “dark night of the soul.”

It was a Herculean effort to even get out of bed in the morning, and many days I didn’t even bother. So what compelled me to walk into the yoga studio that particular day in February?

One word: Desperation.

Deep inside there must have been a part of me that was not willing to give up, despite how I felt on the surface. Somehow, as if being guided, I knew I needed to go to the yoga studio. Once on the mat, I dragged myself through the poses, deep in pain and on the verge of tears with every pose. I wondered if other people around me were living through similar things. Surely I couldn’t be the only one who was living through darkness. Everyone looked so happy, so at peace. But I was drowning in sorrow.

Although I suffered greatly through that first class, there was in some small way a brief respite from the emotional pain when I was forced to focus on the physical challenge at hand…even if only for a second. That brief second of relief in an otherwise seething caldron of pain and anguish was what kept me coming back. And back I came to my yoga mat, again and again.

Within those first six months of my dedicated yoga practice, something very tangible began to happen. I had always been an intuitive person, but my yoga practice seemed to be cracking me open on a whole other level: suddenly I was having vivid psychic dreams, I had several visions that came to fruition, I had profound insights and feelings of “knowing,” and then there was the most profound experience of all, my out of body experience.

They say there are pivotal moments in life, life-altering experiences that change everything. My out of body experience was one of those moments. In an instant, I knew that I was connected to something greater, something so much larger than myself and my minor worldly problems. And I largely credit my yoga practice with allowing my soul to open to the point where it could have that mind-blowing experience.

With a renewed sense of hope and connectedness, I came back to the mat with fervor. And I dove even more deeply. I quickly learned to harness the power of the breath and meditation, and slowly but surely my poses were no longer merely an act of physical exercise. With each yoga pose, with each breath I took, I knew I was aligning my spirit with the divine consciousness, I knew I was connecting more deeply with my true self, my higher self, and with that which connects us to all other beings.

Fast forward to the present day… In February 2013, I passed the five-year mark of my dedicated yoga practice. To say that my yoga practice has changed my life would be an understatement. I am now living more happily, more fully than I have ever lived in my life. And I have fully embodied my spirit.

There is a famous Rumi quote that I refer to often:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

My profound heartache did crack me wide open, and once cracked open, my yoga practice allowed the light to flood in. The yoga allowed me to dive even more deeply into my soul, to touch the heights of elevated consciousness, and to taste the bliss that we are meant to enjoy as spiritual beings living this physical life.

In addition to awakening me to my true spiritual nature, the yoga also allowed me to align with my true purpose on this Earth, to step into the person that I was meant to be, living the mission that I was destined to live. I am living my dharma. I am now a motivational writer dedicated to the power of positivity, dedicated to helping people to always see the light in the darkness, dedicated to embracing life…in all of its forms.

This is the power of yoga.

Jeannie Page is a reformed .com management professional who has made a dramatic shift in her life, a shift to follow her bliss and to get into alignment in order to be a force for good in the world. Martha Stewart’s Blogger of the Month in the November 2011 issue of Whole Living Magazine, Jeannie is also the founder of The Yoga Diaries™ and also maintains her own blog at The Awakened Life (and in Spanish at Despertando a La Vida). Jeannie, and details about her current book project, can be found on Facebook here and on Twitter at @jeannienpage. Jeannie’s Spanish Facebook page can be found here and on Twitter at @JeanniePageES.

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19 thoughts on “Our Story”

Hi Jeannie! Thank you for sharing. I hear your pain. I have felt your pain. I know all too well the feeling of being tossed to the curb like garbage. It’s horrendous and has such a profound impact on our inner landscape. It changes us. But as I have come to learn from my own pain, beauty can blossom and grow out of pain, out of the ravaged landscape of a shattered, devastated heart. I look forward to being a part of the journey with you in “The Yoga Diaries”! I am forever grateful that our paths crossed and that we walk this journey of the heart together. Bobbi (aka “My Inner Mystic”)

Jeannie…thank you for sharing and thank you for creating this website. I too was dumped unceremoniously by my first wife and I didn’t have yoga at that time in my life. Not having it made things worse for sure. Perhaps I will save the rest to submit my story. Continued success and happy life Jeannie!

Hi Jeannie! I love your story of transformation! Congratulations. I, too, have experienced quite a transformation over the past 6 years and it always feels good to discover other women who were able to grow out of pain and heartache into joy. I also live in LA and practice yoga, which yogg studio was it that helped you heal? Light and love! Emily

Hi Emily, thanks for your sweet comment. Fabulous that you also have had great healing! I started at City Yoga in West Hollywood. You should submit your story! We’d love to feature it! https://theyogadiaries.net/submit-a-story/

Thank you so much for creating this forum. I am living in constant Back Pain(Past 11 years) and am depressed. I am only 29 years of age and suffering from slip disc from a Bike accident in 2003.
After reading success stories from this Web site, I have decided to change the way i take my life. Recently Joined a Yoga Class and as i am in very bad shape the Yoga Guru has started Personally guiding me. I know for sure that i am going to recover .
Thanks a lot.